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Yoshimitsu Built The Golden Pavilion
- Yoshimitsu exemplified ostentatious Chinese-style patronage, building a gold-leaf villa that later became the Golden Pavilion temple.
- The original Kinkaku-ji was gold-covered and later burned in 1950, showing cultural legacy and later loss.
Cultural Practices Became More Participatory
- Muramachi culture democratized arts: monks, merchants, samurai, and clergy began writing poetry and seeing plays once limited to kuge.
- Tea drinking spread among samurai and aristocrats, laying groundwork for the formal tea ceremony.
Merchants and Guilds Fueled Urban Growth
- A specialized merchant class and hereditary guilds emerged handling domestic and Asian trade, restricting competition like European guilds.
- Kyoto grew to over 100,000 by 1400, remaining the economic and cultural heart despite political decline.